


For Thine is the Kingdom

by RyMagnatar



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-06
Updated: 2012-12-06
Packaged: 2017-11-20 11:54:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/585143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RyMagnatar/pseuds/RyMagnatar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alpha timeline Eridan has two parts to his body and a growing apathy. Being dead is strange and kind of boring.<br/>He sleeps a lot.<br/>Until Dave shows up in his afterlife.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For Thine is the Kingdom

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Hollow Men](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/14161) by T S Eliot. 



_ Falls the Shadow _

You wake with a whimper.

It’s the same, every single time. The very first sound you hear is the result of your very first action. You suck in a breath and whimper. It is the beginning of each coherent time, each false night that you wake up to starts the same.

You whimper. You wake.

You push yourself up onto your elbow and look down. Purple and black. Black from shadow, black from cloth, black from decay. Purple of lifeblood, purple of cloth, purple of reflected light. You look up.

Today the sky is a murky grey-green and the haze has covered any prick of starlight. You sag back against the ground and close your eyes again. Today it is not worth the effort to try and remember how to be whole again. Today the burden of reality is heavier than it ever was when you lived.

You’ll try again later.

* * *

_ In this last of meeting places… _

Rivers.

You miss swimming.

You never thought you would.

You put a hand over the shoddy, half healed line that connects your top to your body and wince when it throbs in agony. Your hand comes away purple so you close your eyes and you think of the only memory that works still.

_In front of a mirror… new clothes looted from some wiggler… too tight but such great fabric… that cut on your side is healing, look how smooth and shining the scar is._

_If only you had a scar in a more prominent place, surely that would impress Feferi of your badassery._

You touch the wound again. No blood.

Even with it held together from sheer will you don’t try the waters. Especially not in a flooded river like this, you’ll just end up being torn apart and have to go searching for your lower half again. Grasses from the bank, sparse and long, lay horizontal under the river’s accelerated pace.

After a while, you become used to the roaring of the river. You hear something else.

Up swings your head, looking upriver. A pair of bodies are tangled together, spread out on a cloth to keep the sand away. The mad cackling would bring a chill to your spine if that was not already your constant state now. They’re not so far that you can’t recognize them, although for one you only needed that voice.

The other, though, you know of. In a twisting of limbs and amongst her crackling laughter, the human manages to get atop her. He lifts his head, triumphant. Those dark shades on his face are askew. Red eyes look up and see you accidentally.

You stare at him. The smug look on his face is replaced with a darker one, one of annoyance, like you just ripped apart his reality. The girl twists around, eyes a glaring red. Her question is lost to the river’s noise.

His hair is white. His skin is a warm color, like polished wood or these fields of heavily laden wheat you’ve come across in the different worlds. He wears red and it brings out the color of his cheeks, flushed from his activities.

Then, all of a sudden, he recoils, face going pale.

You feel cold wetness on your leg and don’t need to look down to know you’re seeping blood again, vivid purple blooming like a newborn star tied around your waist. You close your eyes and swallow your world in the darkness of your sightlessness. You surrender your body and let it succumb to its natural state. Only distantly is the grit of sand felt against your cheek.

You empty your body of your mind.

You sleep.

* * *

_ The supplication of a dead man’s hand _

The dead should not be haunted.

The dead should do the haunting.

But when you awake in that desolate place, the living ghost in red and golden brown and bone white is lingering. You wake the same as you always have. The breath. The whimper. He watches you with a slight frown and covered eyes. There is an unfamiliar pull in your gut.

You reach a hand down and there’s a new source of black on your skin. Black thread. The purple seam from your wound is present, but trapped beneath the black.

He crouches beside you, elbows on his knees, crunched over like a little red rock. “It isn’t much, but at least you won’t split in half and go falling to pieces at slightest touch of wind.”

His fingertips are purple.

You don’t know how to form words. You stare at him and wonder if he’s like you. You think you should feel indignant that he had the gall to try and fix you but.

Instead it feels kind of nice to have someone try to help you. It’s a change you can appreciate.

He gives a little frown and waves his hand in front of your face. “It wasn’t easy. The least you could do is thank me or something. Tell me your name maybe.”

You sit up and open your mouth. He drops his hand and looks at you. You should have taken up talking to yourself, even if it was tiring to breathe at times. Your mouth is devoid of words. Your tongue heavy as lead. You try to smile instead.

His shoulders rise and fall with a gusty sigh. “Well I guess you don’t really have to say anything at all, if you don’t want to.” He begins to rise.

You grab his arm and pull him down. He tips forward on his toes, catches himself with a hand. He might be about to curse you but you lean forward, close, close enough to kiss him if you could bring yourself to that. You’re shaking as you touch his cheek. It’s unnerving to stare into your reflection so you drop your gaze to his lips. They’re parted and pink. His tongue is red inside. Alive. You think this one might actually be alive.

Your vision blurs. You wish you could bring yourself to kiss him. Instead you bow your head and sob out the only word that you can manage to say.

“Thanks.”

His arms are warm when he gingerly puts them around your shoulders.

* * *

_ Such deliberate disguises _

He has a lot to say.

And a good sense of direction.

But his timing is awful.

He always shows up when you are about to give up on the day and escape. He always finds you, wherever you are, right before you sink into the blackness of unknowing.

He pushes you upright, sits beside you and makes you listen. His worries don’t make sense to you. He feels dated? His raps don’t flow right? He’s without nature’s blessed nectar? He just complains and you just listen.

Sometimes, he will stop. Sometimes he will ask you about your problems.

You tell him whether or not you can feel your toes and then tell him to continue. Always the same. He repeats his worries to you. You wonder if your toes still count as alive. He sits as a warm bundle in red cloth at your side. You think you could be wearing a sackcloth and he would still sit close to you, close like you’re the one giving him heat, giving him comfort.

He starts to hold your hand.

You still haven’t seen his eyes since that first time.

He holds your hand and gestures with the other one.

He starts talking about alcohol. He starts talking about this girl named Rose. He talks about the only thing that makes you angry and you draw blood when you clench his hand too tightly.

So he doesn’t talk about that one anymore.

Sometimes when he talks it’s all rhythm. It’s all references you don’t know and a tempo that could speed your heartbeat up if you knew how to make yourself feel that. It’s music, you know, human music.

And when he goes you dry up. You lay back or lay against a wall, you just relax. You are the stream bed without the water. You are the windswept dunes on a windless day without him. He gives you life when he holds your hand, but you always return to starless darkness.

* * *

_ We are the hollow men _

He is like you.

Countless hours. Countless days. Countless starless skies. Countless words poured out on top of each other and finally.

_Finally_.

Your dead mind gets it.

He is like you. Alone but with companions all around him. Alive just barely, somehow. Stitched together across the middle to keep inside the blackening organs and rank stench of death.

He has plenty to say but only a little has meaning. He is a wisp.

He is empty.

And so are you.

In the silence that will lengthen, you know from experience, until he fidgets and leaves, you pull on his hand.

He looks at you. Your face looks back at you from those black glasses. Empty. He’s empty.

You’re empty.

You don’t talk. Words are useless.

You lean in and touch your lips to his.

 


End file.
